Tom Tancredo pot promise up in smoke

Former Rep. Tom Tancredo’s promise to smoke marijuana has gone up in smoke.

Tancredo is backing out of a bet that required him to smoke marijuana with a documentary filmmaker if voters in his home state legalized the measure in a November referendum. (The measure passed easily.) While Tancredo said earlier this month he would follow through, his wife’s opposition led him to change his mind.

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Tancredo, a Republican who ran for president in 2009 and was best known for his strong stance against illegal immigration, supported the measure, but said he had never smoked marijuana in the past.

While friends of Tancredo’s in the conservative movement weren’t happy with his decision, it was dissension from his family — he told ABC his grandchildren were “very upset with grandpa” — that led him to back out.

“Will have to welch. Political heat is one thing. Am use to that,” Tancredo wrote in an email. “Heat from my family is quite another.”